From her home office in northwest Seattle, Michelle has been crafting compelling content about travel destinations worldwide for more than, gulp, 20 years. In those two decades, she made the leap from editor for the hotel and resort department at Virtuoso to a full-time freelance editor and writer—and never looked back. Add in a cross-country move from New England to Seattle, the birth of three kiddos, the construction of a house and the adoption of one gigantic Bernese mountain dog and, well, life is good.

Michelle hails from her beloved Vermont, though was born in her perhaps even more beloved Greenville, Maine. In fact, no matter where in the world she wanders, her heart finds its way back to her extended family’s one-room cabin on a tiny island in Moosehead Lake, the most glorious place on Earth (shhh!).

These days, most of her travels with her family are within the Pacific Northwest, showing off the grandeur of the North Cascades and national parks to her kids (spanning elementary, middle and high school). Together, they’ve experienced Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, North Cascades National Park, Olympic National Park, Glacier National Park, Mount Hood, Vancouver Island, Banff National Park and Jasper National Park (inspiring the name of said Berner!). Michelle has tackled the Enchantments through-hike in a day, as well as countless hiking and backpacking adventures in the North Cascades and along the PCT. There’s always another hike (or three) queued up on her AllTrails app.

Travels farther afield include the Alps of Switzerland and Germany, Heidelberg, England, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico, Fiji and Prince Edward Island. As the kids grow up and out, Michelle hopes to flex her hiking muscles on Patagonia’s “W” or “O” Circuit and in the Dolomites, the Alps and New Zealand. In the meantime, in between writing, driving soccer carpool, and being a PTA mom, Michelle is a voracious reader, an avid cyclist (having ridden Seattle to Portland and Seattle to Vancouver, she aspires next year for the uphill battle from Vancouver to Whistler) and a burgeoning AT skier. In fact, next year at this time, she hopes this author photo will be from atop Washington’s Mount Baker, just before skiing down from the summit.

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